Delaney said that examining such environments gives researchers a snapshot of what life is like deeper in the Earth's crust, where temperatures are higher. "Our way of doing it was a 'poor man's drilling program,'" he said.

The expedition team used a remotely operated submarine to cut out and bring to the surface a chunk of hydrothermal vent from the Juan de Fuca Ridge, which lies about 200 miles (322 kilometers) offshore from Washington's Puget Sound and nearly 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) deep in the Pacific Ocean.

The seafloor at the Juan de Fuca Ridge is cold, about 2° Celsius (36° Fahrenheit). But down beneath the seafloor the temperature warms gradually until, eventually, it is scalding hot.

"If you telescope those conditions by having hot water coming out along a fissure it will build a sulfide chimney," Delaney said. "And this sulfide chimney is very cold on the outsidetwo or three degreesbut on the inside it might be as much as 300° centigrade."

A chunk of one of these chimneys, or hydrothermal vents, is what Delaney and his team brought to the surface.

"We figured we would see different kinds of microbes in the wall as it got to hotter and hotter temperatures, and [that] pretty soon microbes wouldn't be there [which would] indicate a limit to life under those conditions," he said.

Limits and Origins

Microbes like Strain 121 that live in environments lacking organic carbon are known as archaea, which literally means "ancient." Archaea are genetically different from seemingly similar bacteria, which need organic matter and photosynthesis to survive.

The discovery of Strain 121 bolsters the theory held by some scientists that Earth's first life-forms were archaea that could thrive at high temperature via chemical reactions with hydrogen and iron.

"They appear to be the branches closest to what is the last common ancestor of existing life," Lovley said. "All are hyperthermophiles that live at high temperatures."

Early in Earth's history, according to Delaney, volcanic eruptions occurred on the ocean floor as the planet's core separated from its crust. These eruptions could have allowed the mixing of hydrogen and minerals like iron and sulfur, upon which microbes could thrive.

"That may be one of the paths the origins of life takes," Delaney said. If that's the case, he added, then studying hydrothermal vents is a step in the process of understanding how the dynamics of such a system might work.

And understanding how such a system works on Earth may help in the search for life on other planets.

Farmer, the Arizona State University astrobiologist, said, "At the bottom line, hydrothermal systems were widespread in the early solar system and are thought to still be present in the subsurface of many other solar system objects, like Mars, Europa, and even the interiors of large asteroids."

So perhaps the question for scientists isn't is there life on other planets, but is there life inside them.